Mayor of Nagoya accused of sexual harassment over hand gesture

The mayor of Nagoya, Takashi Kawamura, has been accused of making an inappropriate hand gesture when posing for a photo with young music idols.

The head of Japan’s fourth largest city, and a major industrial center, the 74-year-old mayor stood for a jocular pic with several attendees at a Korean cultural festival in Nagoya held on November 12 and 13.

However, it was immediately noticed that he did the fig sign with his right hand. The image of the smiling Kawamura, surrounded by women decades younger (dressed in traditional Korean clothing), with his thumb between two fingers has caused a minor scandal.

The fig sign, though associated with the evil eye and insulting someone in parts of Europe (and the game “I’ve got your nose” in many other countries), denotes sex in Japan (because it resembles female genitalia). In other words, the resulting group photo seemed to show Kawamura saying, “Look, I’ve scored one of these chicks!”

Kawamura was quickly accused of sexual harassment, though he has claimed he was trying to make a heart symbol and got it wrong. In 2014, he also put his hand on the shoulder of a 17-year-old female voice actor and hugged her during a ceremony, prompting the audience to boo.

Kawamura is no stranger to controversy. In August 2021, he celebrated the Olympic triumph of a female soft ball athlete by removing his face mask and biting her gold medal while the media were present. He also joked to the 21-year-old Olympian if she was allowed to have a boyfriend. The incident led to over 10,000 complaints by email or phone, and the medal was replaced.

In 2019, when the Aichi Triennale sparked a furore among ultranationalists over its inclusion of works critical of the emperor system and the comfort women used by the Japanese military in the war, Kawamura was one of the most prominent voices calling for censorship at the art festival.